Christopher Owens, front man for the San Franciscan duo Girls, slouches into a couch at El Mocambo. His eyelids flicker under a mass of long, dirty blonde hair and a plaid hunting cap. For the dynamic members of the group celebrated by Spin magazine as “the hottest band of 2009,” Owens and his bassist counterpart, JR White, look downright peaked.

Owens stirs, pulls down his cap, and slowly opens his eyes before beginning to speak. Watching the 30-year-old move, it would seem that a rough tour and media frenzy have broken him down—perhaps even more than the 16-odd years Owens spent in a cult, Children of God, travelling around Europe and busking to fundraise for the religious organization. Owens scans the pre-show scene at El Mo, where he is to play a sold-out show that evening, with a pained expression.

“Yeah, the tour’s been alright, I guess,” he says with the enthusiasm of a resentful 13-year-old at a family dinner. “I mean, we’ve had sold out shows every night, so that’s cool.”

The band is taking some time to play the east coast fresh off the success of their album, Album, which gained attention from mainstream news outlets—and major indie cred—after Pitchfork gave it an unbelievably high nine-out-of-10 rating. This tour has been off to a rocky start: the boys of Girls missed their Montreal gig after getting stopped at the border because some of the crew had “legal” issues. This isn’t surprising, given that their driver and crew spend their pre-show downtime passing around medical marijuana certificates, and swapping tips about how to run a dispensary.

Owens left the Children of God cult when he was 16, buying himself a flight from Slovenia to Texas. He lived with his sister for nine years before moving to San Francisco, where he met JR White through a group of mutual friends. White describes them as “fun, aesthetics-loving people, who are just a lot like us.”

Most of the appeal of Album comes from its liberated feeling: Owens doesn’t write about his experiences on the streets of Slovenia. Instead, he explains, it’s all about the things he was going through in San Francisco and his everyday life. The album isn’t about restriction; it’s about the things one does with freedom after living in a cult. It’s about real girls, real instances, and real life—and it deals with these issues with a kind of joy.

“When you’re starved for culture, you find it in whatever you can,” Owens explains, talking about his discovery of Queen and Guns n’ Roses within the confines of the cult. “We used to watch these movies weekly, which were supposed to teach us some moral lesson. I don’t remember the lesson, but Queen did the soundtrack to Highlander. And at the beginning of Lean on Me, they played ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns n’ Roses. After I heard that, I became obsessed.”

But when Owens launches into the role of music in his life, he speaks in a bitter monotone, sounding a bit like a guy rehashing an old love to a prying aunt. “You have to have a reason to be alive,” Owens spits out, as though the words pain him. “I’ve had times in my life when I don’t have anything to live for, and you’d be better off dead.”

“I just want to make music, fall in love, and then die,” White pipes up, his face stoic, with glistening eyes set deep into cragged dark circles.

That night, at the El Mo’s sold-out show, the duo listlessly pumps out a rendition of Album. The band is completely stationary, except for a slight head bob during their popular single, “Lust for Life.” The crowd looks on with disappointment and a growing boredom. The band stares into space and strums on their instruments, miles away from the crowd that was so drawn in by the hype that it didn’t mind getting drunk on a Tuesday night.

Watching Owens’ despondent face as he pumps out “Darling,” the love song he wrote to songwriting itself, I can’t help but think that the passion seems to be gone from the interaction. Maybe Owens has fallen out of love with music. After all, the show feels like a passionless and mechanical sex session. The kind where you’re imagining your partner as some kind of celebrity, and wishing that the room was darker.

Maybe the boys of Girls would be happier smoking some of their crew’s medical marijuana back in San Francisco—but then again, maybe it’s just a rough patch.